


We'll Find Out in a Week

by Auchen



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Humor, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 00:45:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7384246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Auchen/pseuds/Auchen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harley comes to stay with Jonathan Crane for a few days at his hideout when she has nowhere else to go. Over the course of those days, Jonathan struggles to understand why she seems to be trying to do nice things for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Find Out in a Week

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on tumblr over a year ago, but I just barely rediscovered it and found that I liked it, so I'm putting it up here. I wrote this while wearing Jon/Harley shipping goggles, but their interactions can be read as platonic if you prefer.

1.) He initially answered the door with a canister of fear gas in his hand. He didn’t think he had told anyone about his hideout this round of being free from Arkham, so there was no sense in taking chances. And any possible chance to study an intruder’s fear was simply a bonus as a result of his self-defense. But when he pressed his eye to the peephole he saw a face half smeared with grease paint, her bottom lip petulantly sticking out, a old ratty bag slung over her shoulder bulging with an assortment of items.

Jonathan almost didn’t open the door, but for one thing, she was ridiculously persistent and ignoring her would only make the problem worse. And for another thing, the image of her sitting in the middle row of his lecture hall flickered through his mind. Just Miss Quinzel then, not Harley.

He sighed and nudged the canister under a chair near the door and undid the door latch. Harley waved at him as if her visits were a regular occurrence.

“Hiya Jonny! I was wondering if I could stay here for a while? Mistah J and I are kinda on the outs right now.” She nodded at her bag.

“Why don’t you go stay with Miss Pamela? I’m sure she’d be more than happy to oblige,” Jonathan said. He didn’t like the idea of her briefly taking over his small space with her energy.

“Red’s in Arkham right now, so I figured you were my best bet.” Harley smiled up at him, and started to cross the threshold. He barred her way. She frowned.

“C’mon, don’t be like that, Doc. It’ll only be for a few days. Promise,” she said, standing straight, putting a hand over her heart and crossing her fingers.

“I recall a few times when you promised to have a paper in on time, and you didn’t.” Jonathan didn’t remove his arm from the threshold.

Harley slumped with a sighed and rolled her eyes. “A week, tops. You wouldn’t really put a girl in need out on the streets, would ya?”

Jonathan looked her over again. She was her usual self, overly chipper and dramatic when it came to her love life. But he traced the frayed edges of her bag with his eyes and saw her few belongings trying to work their way out of a tear in the bottom, and noticed how the true color of her skin peeked through the smudged white mask of her grease paint.

Only a week.

And he was planning on being out as much as he could anyway. He heaved a sigh and closed his eyes. “All right.”

“Yipee!” She cried, and flung her arms around his neck.

Jonathan stiffened and his arms stayed at his sides like two leaden weights before she pulled away.

“You aren’t gonna regret this, Jonny,” Harley said with a wink and flopped onto the rotten couch that sulked in the corner.

He could already feel a headache building behind his eyes.

  
2.) They saw little of each other the first day, because he’d been out, and Jonathan didn’t mind that. He’d had a particularly successful heist that day after breaking into a lab and stealing chemicals necessary for mixing up a new batch of fear toxin. Jonathan entered late, bag of chemicals rattling in his hand as he pulled the door open. His burlap mask scratched against his face as he pulled it off and inhaled the musty scent of his temporary home.

On the table near the door lay a stack of feminine magazines. Grinning, red lipped models stared up at him with blue and green eyes. He swept them off without hesitation and tossed the bag onto the table. The quiet flop of magazines hitting the floor seemed to act as a sort of alarm, because Harley came running into the room seconds later dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, red in the face.

“I got those special today! Don’t do that!” she grabbed at the stack and punched him in the arm.

“I won’t do that if you don’t put your things all around my space. You’re the guest here, act accordingly, or I’ll kick you and your magazines out into the gutter.”

Harley gasped and hugged her magazines to her chest. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Jonathan thought for a moment. Would he?

Yes, he would. Former student or not, Gotham was no place for sentiment.

“Don’t test your luck,” he said, grabbed his bag and mask, and walked away.

3.) Jonathan had fallen asleep in the bedroom in the abandoned house that could hardly be counted as a bedroom. It was more like a broom closet. He’d spent hours mixing up a new batch of toxins, and he’d must have lost track of the time. His neck was stiff from being pressed against the floor for so long, and his fingers smelt like a mixture of rot and chemicals.

When was the last time he had bathed? And was the floor sticky?

After a few minutes of contemplating these questions in a haze, he saw that there was a small box next to his face. He stared at it for a moment, wondering why someone would make a box so yellow before he grabbed it. It was a cereal box, he discovered. The brand was some sort of generic grain based cereal with a smiling sun the outside of it, declaring itself to be _Smile-os._

He turned his head at the sound of Harley knocking out the frame of the doorway. Harley stood in the midmorning light (what time was it?) with her arms crossed, hair pulled into messy pigtails. She shrugged.

“Figured you could use something to eat. Or do you just eat fear for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?”

Jonathan stared at her for another moment. His sleep deprived brain wasn’t still wasn’t functioning properly. “Thank you…?” he wasn’t sure whether it was a question or not.

“Don’t be too thankful. I didn’t get you any milk to go with it.” She tilted her head and shuffled.

Well, he did need to eat something, he supposed, if he wanted to continue functioning at at least basic levels. Jonathan jammed his hand into the box and pulled out palm full of little yellow squares. He crammed it in his mouth and chewed, crumbs spilling to the floor.

It tasted like the cardboard it came in.

4.) The fourth day was much like the second. He was out most of the day, not thinking of Harley or what she could be getting up to. It had been a rather successful night, all in all. He had turned several bums on each other and watched as they fought it out; fascinated by the way humans regressed to their basic animal instincts with so little urging.

When Jonathan pushed the door open, he didn’t see anyone there. There was no evidence of Harley’s meddling. No magazines, no frilly pink curtains, and no ridiculous poofy dresses. (He hated to think of that third incident. It had involved fish and garters.)

But there was little point in worrying. Harley did as she pleased, and if he were lucky, she might have found somewhere else to invade with her shining personality. He dropped his bag by the door and was about to pull off his mask when something jumped out from behind the couch.

It was a sheet with eye holes cut into it. “Boo!” the sheet shouted, waving the vague lumps of its arms.

Jonathan blinked.

“C’mon, that didn’t startle you, even a little bit?” the ghost asked in Harley’s disappointed whine.

“Hardly,” he said.

“You flinched.”

“I didn’t.”

She threw off the sheet and pinched her forefinger and thumb together. “Yeah, you did, just a little bit.”

“Well, unless you can prove that with documented evidence, then I’m afraid this argument is closed,” he said, picking up his bag. Had that mold splotch on the back wall been there yesterday?

“Prof, did you just basically say ‘pics or it didn’t happen?’ ” Harley walked in front of him raised an eyebrow at him and crossed her arms.

“Goodnight, Harley.” He moved around her.

“This isn’t over, you know,” she called.

“It never is.”

5.) The next morning Jonathan woke up with folded pants and a shirt next to him, a sticky note stuck to the top of the stack. He blinked and pulled the sticky note off, holding it up to his face in the dim light.

_Jon, your clothes are awful ratty, so I sewed up the rips in this shirt and these pants. You might be the Scarecrow, but a guy’s gotta at least have one pair of nice duds, right?_

_Oh, also, I’m not going to be around much today. And don’t look in the hallway closet._

Pushing aside all questions concerning the hallway closet for now, Jonathan pushed himself up and unfolded the clothing. Harley’s sewing had done little to make them look any less thread-bear, but the mouth of a gaping hole in the knee of the pants was gone, and the little tears crisscrossing the elbows of the shirt had been stitched up.

Jonathan looked at the clothes for another moment and pocketing the sticky note.

6.) The next morning he was greeted by furious pounding on his bedroom door. “Rise an’ shine Doc Jon!” Harley yelled into the room.

He threw the pillow he had been using at her, but her vast experience of being punched by bat shaped objects allowed her to easily dodge it. The pillow hit the wall with and slumped there. Jonathan did not move from his prostrate position on the floor.

“Great news, Jon,” she continued as if he had responded to her. “I’m gonna leave earlier than I thought!”

“Ah,” was all he said when he sat up. He shook off a piece of paper that had gotten stuck to his hand.

“Aw, why the long face, aren’t ya happy about it?” she asked, leaning against the door frame.

Jonathan wiped a hand down his face, trying to banish sleep from his eyes. “Of course I am.”

“Actually, I’m gonna be leaving now. I just came to say goodbye.” Harley reached down and picked up the bag she had originally come with.

Jonathan blinked. Now? He had thought she would at least be staying until the evening. “You are?”

“See, there you go again, acting disappointed. Admit it; you need me to keep you going.” She grinned at him.

“Hardly,” he snorted. But that did raise the question, why did she seem to think what he did mattered so much? He had hardly acted in a way that would merit reminding him to feed himself and other basic necessities. If it had been anyone else, he would have chalked it up to ulterior motives. But it was hard to know with her. And unanswered questions like that bothered him.

“Harley, why do you care?” Jonathan asked, pushing himself up with a hand.

She raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t I? You’re my friend, Jon, even if you don’t think so yourself. Friends care about each other, don’t they? And anyway, I just wanted to see you smile.”

The answer was so simple. It was such a contrast to the darkness that he knew was inside both of them, gnawing them up bit by bit every year.

“Well, I wish you luck,” he said.

“Same to you. Good luck spooking people in your Wizard of Oz Halloween costume,” she said with a grin. And with that, her silhouette disappeared from doorway, and he heard the front door click closed.

Jonathan let out a sigh that he had been holding most of the week. There were to be no more unknown squeals and squeaks caused by another presence in the house rifling through his things and popping up around corners.

He stood up and prepared himself for another night of experiments, checking his canisters and toxins, and checking up on his mixtures.

And when the shadows grew long and the moon emerged, he donned his costume and let the burlap press against his face. For a moment he found himself turning around to bid Harley a good night, but only saw the empty air in front of him.


End file.
